Lesson 18: Organization Theme Introduction
People! Managing people is one of the most difficult aspects of project management. Some of the things you need to do is explained in PRINCE2®'s Organization theme, but remember that you need to invest on your soft skills as well, which is not the subject of PRINCE2. So, can you explain the roles and responsibilities in PRINCE2?
Based on AXELOS PRINCE2® material. Reproduced under licence from AXELOS. All rights reserved.
Note: PRINCE2 2017 edition is now called PRINCE2 6th edition.
- 00:07 – The Organization Theme
- 00:10 – This theme actually covers two main topics
- 00:13 – First, the organizational structure which includes the roles and responsibilities which we expect
- 00:20 – And then, communication; so how communication is done during the project
- 00:26 – So a tip to remember this communication part
- 00:29 – You have to communicate to people during the project
- 00:32 – So which theme would you look for a list of people involved in the project?
- 00:37 – Well, you would look in the Organization Theme
- 00:41 – This theme covers the typical roles in a PRINCE2 project
- 00:45 – So for example, the roles in the Project Board which are the senior user, the executive and the senior supplier and so on
- 00:54 – The Organization Theme also covers the management levels
- 00:58 – So at the top we have the CPC, which is the Corporate, Programme or Customer
- 01:03 – And then we have the Project Board and other layers as well, which we will go over in a moment
- 01:10 – The representatives cover the roles that represent the business user and supplier
- 01:16 – Part of any project is to figure out how to communicate to the different project stakeholders
- 01:22 – There are many public examples of projects that had big issues with the wrong and bad communication
- 01:29 – So just imagine if your CEO or your leader was allowed to rant on Twitter at 3 o’clock in the morning, how much of a problem that would cause!
- 01:38 – It is therefore important to know your stakeholders, group them and figure out how they view the project and then how to engage with them
- 01:49 – So what type of questions does the organizational structure help us to answer?
- 01:55 – Well, first of all, it helps to answer who’s who in the project
- 01:59 – So who is assigned the different roles, and this needs to be known
- 02:05 – Also, people need to know and understand their own roles, so they need to know, “What is expected from me?”
- 02:13 – The Project Manager should take time to make sure that people know their own roles
- 02:19 – Next, they need to be aware of the other roles and what to expect from them during the project
- 02:25 – The Project Manager should also check regularly that people are carrying out their roles as agreed
- 02:33 – The whole idea here is to make sure that people get serious about their roles and are held accountable
- 02:41 – PRINCE2 has done a good job of creating good roles and responsibility descriptions for each major role in a PRINCE2 project
- 02:50 – And these should be used, at least as a basis
- 02:54 – There are three different project interests in a project
- 02:58 – The first of these I will discuss is the Business Interest and the executive role looks after the business interest
- 03:06 – Therefore, the executive should always be asking the question, “Is this project value for money?”
- 03:14 – The next of these project interests is User Interest
- 03:18 – So the outputs of the project will impact the users, so they must be represented in the project as they will benefit from the delivered products and they will also operate, maintain or support the project’s outputs
- 03:33 – So, users then should help to describe the requirements in product descriptions
- 03:39 – And they should be interested to see that the correct products are produced and to the agreed quality level, so they can use them as expected
- 03:47 – The senior user role then will represent the user’s interests on the Project Board
- 03:54 – And lastly, the Supplier Interest
- 03:57 – So the supplier provides the resources and the skills to create the products and they can either be internal or external in the company
- 04:06 – So for example, you can have an internal IT department or use an external IT company to create an IT application
- 04:16 – The supplier interests are represented on the Project Board by the senior supplier role
- 04:22 – So the supplier, how they think? Well, they wish to make sure that they can deliver what’s promised and as requested and to get paid
- 04:33 – So, we also use the term Three Main Project Interests
- 04:38 – So, what happens if one of these three interests is not represented in a project?
- 04:44 – Let’s take for example, users; if they are not properly represented
- 04:48 – The business and supplier interest can still create a brilliant product, but this product will probably never be used
- 04:56 – And this kind of things happens a lot where the supplier is allowed to assume user requirements
- 05:02 – So users must be represented and not just at the start of the project, but all the way during the project to make sure that they’re going to get a product that they can use
- 05:13 – PRINCE2 assumes there will be a customer who requests the product and who will pay for the product and perhaps use the product
- 05:21 – And PRINCE2 also assumes then that a supplier will produce the product, so we have our customer and supplier
- 05:29 – Both the customer and the supplier can exist within the same company; so, for example, two different departments
- 05:36 – Or the supplier could also be external
- 05:40 – So now let’s look at this from a completely other way
- 05:43 – So let’s say that you work for a software development company and your customer is external
- 05:49 – So your customer is a bank and your company is providing the bank with a new application
- 05:55 – So the bank is the external customer
- 05:58 – Your company then will have its own business reasons for doing the project
- 06:02 – For example, it can wish to have a 30% margin and win future projects
- 06:09 – And then the bank can also have its own business reasons
- 06:13 – So your company will have its own Business Case and the bank will also have its own Business Case
- 06:20 – So I just want to show you that there are different ways to look at a project
- 06:26 – So now let’s look at the different levels in the project organization
- 06:31 – As you can see, there are four levels in a project structure
- 06:35 – Level one is the Corporate, Programme or Customer
- 06:39 – So this level is responsible for commissioning the project and identifying the executive
- 06:45 – They decide at the start of the project how the Project Board will keep them updated and they will also define the project tolerances that the Project Board will work within
- 06:58 – The next level, what we call the Direction level
- 07:01 – So here, the Project Board will sit, and the Project Board are responsible for directing the project and will be accountable for the success of the project
- 07:12 – And they do the following: they approve all resources and major plans; for example, the Project Plan and Stage Plan
- 07:20 – They authorize any deviation if tolerances are exceeded
- 07:25 – And they approve the completion of each stage and authorize each new stage
- 07:32 – The process Directing a Project describes the work of the Project Board
- 07:38 – Then the next level we have is what we call the Management level and here is where the Project Manager sits
- 07:45 – The Project Manager is responsible for the day-to-day management of the project
- 07:50 – And their primary responsibility is to ensure that the project produces the required products in accordance with the objectives
- 07:59 – Which are, time, cost, quality, scope, benefits, and risk. Remember these are the six project variables
- 08:09 – And then the lowest level is what we call the Delivery level
- 08:13 – So the team managers here are responsible for delivering the project’s products at a certain quality and within a specific time scale and cost
- 08:24 – A team manager can have the authority and responsibility of creating team plans and managing a team to create and deliver the required products
- 08:34 – And the process Managing Product Delivery is where the teams produce such specialist products
- 08:41 – PRINCE2 calls these four levels the Project Organization
- 08:46 – So think of a company organization that contains all levels
- 08:51 – And PRINCE2 refers to these three levels as the Project Management Team
- 08:56 – So this is a temporary team, it is only a team during the project and the top level, which we have the Corporate or Customer or Programme or Customer, is outside the project
- 09:07 – So a common exam question we get is which level sits outside the Project Management Team?
- 09:14 – And the answer of course now is the Corporate, Programme or Customer
So, now you know that communications are covered in this theme. How do you think we should set the strategies for communications?
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